Legendarily, American founding father Benjamin Franklin — sybarite, contrarian and older than most in the founding coterie — preferred the courageous turkey as opposed to the cowardly bald eagle, stating so in a letter to daughter Sarah Franklin Bache.

“For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country,” Franklin wrote. “He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly.”

The man called the “patron saint of advertising” continued, “For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America.... He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.”

But people hunted the venerable Meleagris gallopavo nearly into extinction in the South Atlantic states around the dawn of the 20th Century, and didn’t make circumstances better by unknowingly destroying wild turkey habitat. But, the bird was resilient and efforts headed by scientists, hunters and conservationists to restore wild turkey populations took off.

In 40 years, North Carolina’s wild turkey population grew from 2,000 to 260,000, all the while allowing for larger harvests by state sportsmen.

Again this summer, the state Wildlife Resources Commission opened up its turkey summer observation survey, which depends on the input of state and local residents and runs July 1-Aug. 31.

NCWRC staffers are looking for raw numbers, productivity and carryover in wild turkey populations to better understand those populations between the regular five-year total population evaluations.

Up to 1996 in Jones County, and 2000 in Lenoir and Greene counties, you couldn’t hunt turkey because the populations couldn’t sustain it. Now, according to the total 2013 harvest, hunters came away with 117 turkeys in Lenoir County, 81 in Greene County and 212 in Jones County.

Though Eastern North Carolina’s a hub for farm-raised turkey, wild turkeys are more likely to be found in the central and western areas of the state.

According to NCWRC Surveys and Research Biologist Evin Stanford, the coastal plain contains around 66,000 wild turkeys at last count, while the piedmont and mountain regions each sported about 97,000 birds each.

“Of course, those areas differ in size,” Stanford said. “But, generally speaking, the areas with the higher densities are probably some of those northern coastal plain and piedmont counties. We finished our turkey restoration efforts in 2005, and the coastal plain was the last region where restoration efforts occurred.”

He continued, “So, we still in some parts of the coast have expanding and growing turkey populations, whereas for most of the piedmont and the mountains, we’ve had well-established populations for a much longer time period.”

To maintain population growth and control, there’s a necessary set of laws and regulations governing how to handle wild turkeys. NCWRC Officer Michael Paxinos is one of a number of state law enforcement officers whose job it is to make sure everyone’s behaving properly.

“The main violations that I see, I guess — since I’ve been here in Lenoir County — will be baiting turkeys,” Paxinos said.

The South Carolina Senate unanimously voted in March to clarify and improve its turkey-baiting law, which prohibits placing or scattering “salt, shelled, shucked, or unshucked corn, wheat, other grains, or seeds or other foodstuffs which could constitute a lure, attraction, or enticement for wild turkeys.”

But, Paxinos noted, people using methods like baiting could be expected to try and haul off more than the legally allowed couple of gobblers a season.

“It negatively affects the population, where we’re trying to keep it to certain levels to keep the population increasing,” Paxinos said.

There’s a reason why some people cheat, and it’s not just because of a reflexive tendency to do things by the easiest possible method. Turkeys aren’t always sitting ducks, per se. Your average turkey can outrun Olympic champion Usain Bolt.

But should you get out among the gold medal-level gobblers, the NCWRC suggests, “Pay particular attention to hens with poults to provide an accurate count of both hens and poults. Also, record observations of hens without poults and gobblers.

“Observations should be made during the course of routine daily activities. Suspect repeat observations of the same turkeys should not be recorded. On days when multiple observations are made, each observation should be recorded separately.”

You can participate in the annual summer survey by first signing up at http://ncwildlife.org/summerturkeysurvey.

Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 and Wes.Wolfe@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.